The Raggedy Lord
by littlemolly
Summary: They've come home, but the past still haunts her.


He has done it, after all. The blacksmith boy – the bastard son of a drunken King – and he has brought his woman home, and taken a castle. They call him Lord of Winterfell and he still lingers over replying, afraid they mean another, after all. They bow and scrape, the maids flirt and the boys avoid his gaze, and he sometimes wants to stand in the middle of dinner, wave a hand at the musicians and shout at them all. Can't they recognise him? He's one of them, he's just a blacksmith boy who loved a raggedy girl and came home with her. But his raggedy girl is the lady of Winterfell now, and that makes him a Lord.

"My Lord," she says mockingly as she sits astride her horse, before pulling away into a gallop, across her lands. Try as he might, he can never catch her – he has to wait at the pool at the godswood, staring down into the rippling water, before she creeps up behind him and wraps her arms around him. Try as she might, she can never reach all the way around his shoulders and every time he swings her over and bundles her into his lap. "Milady," he whispers in her ear before pressing a string of gentle kisses down her neck until she is giggling and punching at his chest for him to stop. Their loving is sweet and light – they are done with the dark, heavy times for now.

A long summer later, her belly begins to swell and he begins to babble nonsense to a little lord as she lies dozing, beside him in their warm bed. She pushes him away when she is awake, and once she left him altogether to sleep in her private chamber when he kissed the swell of her belly and addressed it as his little lady. She grows short tempered and fretful – once she throws a plate of plums at a serving wench and then promptly bursts into tears. Her appetite lessens, until she ceases to show her face at dinner altogether. She takes to sleeping in her own chamber every night, until he wakes one morning and realises he has not seen his wife in three days and nights.

He comes upon her weeping, with the Septa and a midwife fluttering around her. Before he made her quick with child, he only ever saw his wife weep with rage – now he has learned the look of misery on her face, and it twists his gut like a knife. "What is it?"

"Milady, milady is most grieved to hear…a girl, milord. She's expecting a girl," the midwife says, plainly terrified. He gestures at both of the women to leave impatiently, and kneels at his wife's feet. Her swollen belly has forced her into skirts – he has always loved her best in her riding gear, though the Septa swears it is a sin.

"A girl, milady. A little lady for Winterfell," he says hesitantly. She muffles her sobs in her sleeves, drawing her feet up beneath her skirts and tucking them away. Sometimes he wonders when she has the most power – when she screams at him and brandishes a blade, or when she simply turns her face away. He tries again. "A little Sansa, maybe? Sansa Stark?"

Her sobs die away and she looks down at him, but her face is drawn and cold. "There is already a Sansa Stark," she hisses, every inch the highborn lady who married a bastard and she sweeps away magnificently – proving that she has not forgotten every lesson the septa taught her as a girl.

He sighs, and rests his aching forehead on the windowsill, still warm from her seat. And then he clenches his fist, and gets to his feet – he knows what to do, now.

* * *

"Milady?"

"Go away," Arya says simply. She is huddled in her cold bed – the warmth of the fountains does not reach here, and she misses the heat of her married chamber, but she cannot bear to sleep next to Gendry anymore.

"Milady, your husband –"

A dagger thuds against the wooden door, and the maid yelps with fear. There is a brief pause, and then the door swings open. Gendry stands there, in his 'fine outfit' – the one he only wears to receive nobility, for when he's 'pretending to be a lord', as he puts it. Once she would have laughed and kissed him, but now she can barely muster the energy to meet his gaze.

It's cold, and he looks stern. "Get a cloak on. It's cold outside. Ten minutes," then he's gone.

Awkwardly, she climbs out of bed – she misses the day when she could bound onto a horse's back without a thought, she can barely remember being thin and lithe and graceful, and pulls a loose linen smock, lined with fur, over her head. Then she wraps a dark cloak around her and pulls on a pair of riding boots. She looks like a peasant woman, a crazed fat woman hawking her wares on the side of the road, but she has lost interest in how she looks, if she ever cared.

* * *

"Why are we standing here?" she says, biting her lip and trying not to shiver with the cold. He notices anyway, and pulls off his own cloak to wrap it around her. She takes it without a word of thanks.

"We're waiting for someone," he says coolly.

"I'm not dressed for guests, you should have –"

"It doesn't matter," he says, cutting across her. "Just, look."

They are almost at the gates of Winterfell, a small band of travellers dressed richly, but with no banner, no proclaimers to announce their arrival. "Come on," he says, tugging at his wife's arm. "Let's go down."

She sighs, and takes his hand to help her down the steps to the main courtyard. He watches as she shakes her head and her 'lady face' smoothes her frown with a false smile and bright eyes. "Who is it?" she asks, as if just remembering.

He can do nothing but nod, as the first rider through the gate alights, and sweeps back her hood.

The years have been cruel to Sansa Stark, but instead of roughing and blunting her, as age does, she appears beaten like metal to a finer form, a brighter shine. Her red hair gleams in the light reflecting off the snow, setting off her pale skin and blue eyes. She is the greatest beauty at court they say, but they sing songs of the Sad Beauty even in Winterfell, and she will never take a man to wed. She renounced Winterfell, she renounced everything, to stay at court and listen to sad ballads, and never once let her perfect smile slip from her face.

But now, it does.

"Sansa!" Arya breathes before she lunges forward across the courtyard into an ungainly run towards her sister. Gendry can just see her sister's smile crumple, and a tear spill down her pale cheek before they smash together in a tight embrace – the shorter Arya with her arms wrapped around her sister's waist, Sansa with her face buried in her little sister's brown mop. "Oh, Sansa," his wife moans, her body shaking with sobs.

* * *

It is deep winter, and Gendry wishes he had never left his bedchamber. Shaking the snow off his boots, he drops his steaming cloak to the floor and pushes the door open wide. Their room is lit with the glow of a fire, and he takes a second to breathe in the warmth before turning to his wife. She is bent over the wooden cradle, rocking it gently with one hand and stroking their daughter's head with the other. For the moment she is lost in her daughter, and has not noticed his entrance.

"Sshh, little Kitty, time to sleep," she whispers. His Arya, his lady, is as brave a warrior as any man and she has killed, and fought, and still sometimes when they are hunting he can see the blood lust rise up in her eyes. But with her baby she is as gentle as any mother, stroking the light red curls as if they were the most precious of jewels. "Sleep Kitty kit, kit kit kit." She yawns. "Dada thinks you'll be a little warrior, you know? You could have a little dagger, and a horse of your own. I could teach you to shoot. Or you could go to court with Sansa, and learn to wear dresses, and play with dolls, and sing silly songs about pretty girls. But we'd come with you, Kitty. We'll look after you…I'll look after you. I won't let anyone hurt you, ever," she says, a slow tear splashing on her baby's forehead.


End file.
